Self-diagnosis

It’s almost 8pm on the last evening of April. I’m wrapped up in one too many coats, preparing myself for the colder temperatures of Australia’s south and my mind is alive. Why are there so many people on my flight? WHY ARE THERE SO MANY PEOPLE ON MY FLIGHT? Why are there so many people flying from Brisbane to Adelaide on a rainy Thursday afternoon? What are they all doing, and why are they all smiling? The Tiger sales didn’t start until next week! What allows these people to break their regular human existence and go to Adelaide? Don’t these people have jobs for goodness sake!

Every time I board a flight I ask these questions internally. Every now and again, however, I’m the passenger you despise. “How much did you pay?” I would ask. “Only cabin luggage? You must be a good-packer!,” (a quality I wish I inherited from my nimble-fingered and semi-minimalist mother). Do other people ask these questions? According to the oily seventeen year boy and his mother sitting next to me, they’re not! While I could see this quality as being nosey I prefer to look at it as a good quality. Even better, I’ve recently given myself a diagnosis. I’m a journalist. Despite all the signs, I don’t suffer from a medical condition, rather, it’s a insatiable desire for knowledge and for stories.

In hindsight, it’s a condition I’ve had for for quite a while.How I do I know? Here’s how:

I get upset if somebody knows more about a news story than I. Don’t get this confused with people that posses knowledge, rather, this is a distinct rage and disappointment when I do not know about breaking news. Diagnosis: journalist.

I question people a little more than expected upon first meeting them. I’ve never settled for gratuities. My father has always told me that small talk is for boring people. I tend to agree. Diagnosis: journalist.

My social media networks are so dominated by news networks I tend to somehow overlook rather big events in the lives of my friends like pregnancies and engagements (sorry Emily). Diagnosis: journalist.

While all the evidence has pointed towards this diagnosis, it’s a relatively recent discovery. Yes, I am in my fourth year of university studying journalism, criminology and political science, but I didn’t know I wanted to do it. Not really anyway. It genuinely is a new realisation… a realisation that occurred on my flight, on a rainy Thursday afternoon. I’m sitting here with the biggest smile on my face having accidentally chosen the right thing to study scribbling about it in my phone, and suddenly I’m one of them. Here I am, smiling at myself on a bumpy overpriced flight to Adelaide to visit two darling friends and drink too much wine. That’s my story.